


I Can't Undress Your Heart

by Coldest_Fire



Category: House of Night - P. C. Cast & Kristin Cast
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Bisexual Lynette, Bisexual Neferet, Cameos from Neferet's other canon lovers, Exhibitionism???, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Neferet's notorious aversion to clothing, Neferet's notorious aversion to having feelings, Neferet/Arctus but not fo rlong, Neferet/Loren but as a failed one night stand, Neferet/kalona but as friends with benefits, Roommates to lovers, and they were ROOMMATES, canon backstories but everyone's had some therapy, lighthearted and gay, off-screen bdsm probably
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:06:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28445127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coldest_Fire/pseuds/Coldest_Fire
Summary: Lynette moves to a college town, and has to find a roommate. When she moves in with Neferet, she learns that her roommate has quirks to say the least. She's beautiful, allegedly indiscriminate in her choice of lovers, and naked half the time, and just emotionally unavailable enough for Lynette not to be able to be with her. As they slowly become friends, Lynette has to try to balance her crush with trying to be a good friend, but it just seems to get more and more difficult.
Relationships: Neferet (House of Night)/Lynette Witherspoon
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	1. Move In Day

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is my break from dark stuff--GM is getting into Lynette's backstory, which is traumatic, To The End is dealing with Neferet discussing her backstory with the monstress, Are You Still Mine is dealing with trauma, trust issues and the threat of death by the monstress, to say nothing of the buffy fic I've written (I can no longer say I've never used an archive warning...). This piece is just going to be fun. I'm not writing this as a serious character study like the rest of my stuff. The title is based on a song called "Private Parts" for fuck sake. 
> 
> Backstories are all still canon, but like, the characters have plausibly had enough therapy that I don't have to address it much--work with me here. This is a funny fic about awkward crushes and naked roommates. Entirely based on the fact that Neferet doesn't seem to wear clothes often in the later series, and seems cool with just being naked in front of people a lot??? 
> 
> Song at the end of the chapter is "I Get Off" by Halestorm. This fic will subject you to my splendid playlist.

The best thing that had ever happened to Lynette was the scholarship money that, after a couple years of work, got her across the country, and far from everyone she knew, one way ticket and all. She was pretty sure, even if her mother had been sober, she wouldn’t have remembered where she said she was going, even if she’d told the truth. No mailing address. She was _gone._

In her little college town, Lynette was new, she was free, and she was broke as all hell. She didn’t have a car. She didn’t have uni residence after her first year, and that was what lead to her having to look for somewhere else to live.

It started with a post in a residence Facebook group: _ISO roommate/place to rent close to campus._ She specified that ideally, it was some cheap, terrible broom closet of a place that she could afford, and put a ballpark figure of the most rent and utilities her loans would cover. She, predictably, didn’t hear back until the day before her move-out date. It was a miracle anyone had anything to offer.

Another student messaged her, telling her she had a shitty broom closet, but it was far from campus, and bus routes that lead to campus. She offered to drive her whenever their schedules matched up, and Lynette briefly wondered how shitty the place had to be for the other person living there to offer free rides, and rent that cheap. Or how weird living with her was, if she couldn’t get a roommate. She didn’t think she’d seen her in class—her profile pic was blurry, but she had deep auburn hair that was plainly visible, and Lynette didn’t remember anyone with hair like it.

Either way, she agreed to meet her there, and took an uber to it—at least 10 minutes outside most of civilization, some tiny little basement under a suburban house that looked a tad dilapidated.

It wasn’t good, but Lynette had lived in worse.

She knocked on the door, and messaged that it was her, come to check it out. She was hardly done knocking when it opened. The girl’s profile pic had been blurry, and it didn’t prepare her for what she saw. She had deep auburn hair, and green eyes, and was wearing a loose summer dress that flowed down her body in an effortless sort of cascade of fabric. Quite likely, she was one of the most beautiful people Lynette had ever seen. Otherworldly came to mind. “Lynette, right?” She asked, “pleasure to meet you. I’m Neferet.”

Lynette was proud of herself for sounding like a regular human being when she responded, “Nice place you got here, it’s only about half as far from civilization as we know it as you said,” she laughed.

Neferet shook her head, “just wait until winter. It makes up for it then,” she quipped, opening the door.They descended a set of stairs into a small room with wooden floors, and a couch that separated the entry from the living room. Another couch—this one blue, the other black—sat pressed against the wall. There was a small TV propped up on a wooden table at the front of the room, and a rug in the middle. To her right was a kitchen, behind a strange wall with a window-like hole cut in it, and then two doors, adjacent to the kitchen, and a door on the end of the hall. “It isn’t much. This is all common space. The bathroom is at the end there, and your bedroom would be the second.”

The place was small, but clean, and had functional appliances, which was more than Lynette expected. The only mess she saws a flood of papers strewn across the couch, with a laptop sitting atop them. “The landlady is upstairs. She’s very old, very hard of hearing, and very willing to bring her cooking down when she thinks we aren’t eating enough,” Neferet explained. “What do you think?”

“Where do I sign?” Lynette asked.

Neferet began to sift through the papers when her phone started to buzz, and she picked it up, not saying any kind of greeting into it, “did you get them to at least increase it?” She asked, voice somewhere between terse and tired.

There was a long pause and, “Jessica, I’ve been waiting almost three years. What am I paying you for?”

She hung up before she got much of an answer, and thrust a paper out to Lynette to sign, “if you want a lawyer to check it out, I can recommend you a shitty one.”

Lynette signed with no hesitations, and Neferet even drove her to pick up her things—tomorrow was move out after all, but tomorrow, Neferet had something to be doing. It suited Lynette just fine. Neferet loitered in the parking lot while she threw her bags into the back of her car. Lynette got into the passenger sear after dropping off her keys, two teas from the campus cafe in tow. “It was the least I can do. You drove all this way,” she explained.

Neferet smiled, and took a sip. “I think I’ve made an excellent choice of roommate,” she appraised, setting her tea down and steering them out of the parking lot.

Summer was normal enough. Lynette got a job at a bookstore she could get to by the one bus nearby, and Neferet was out a lot of the nights, but neither did anything Wednesday nights. Lynette had labelled it roommate night, in which one of them would try and/or fail to make dinner, and half the time they’d order takeout. The first week, Lynette learned that Neferet was not the most adept at cooking, but stomached a couple bites of burned chicken, before Neferet scraped hers into the garbage, and ordered something better. It was endearing though, seeing her try. Lynette got the impression that she hadn't really learned to cook before moving here.

By the end of their first month living together, Lynette liked to think that they were friends. She also liked to think that Neferet liked her, at least in the enjoying her around kind of way. She didn’t seem to be seeing anyone, so Lynette could hope. It was mid-May the first time it happened.

Lynette had just gotten home from work when she first saw her. She was carrying a tea latte of some kind, something cinamonny that one of her coworkers brought back from the Starbucks for her, when she’d entered the living room. When she opened the door, Neferet turned around, but quickly returned to the concert-livestream she was listening to. When Lynette entered the room to ask what the band was—hard rock, female singer, not one she’d ever heard, she stopped cold and spilled lukewarm cinamonny tea latte down her shirt, and then stumbled back. “Neferet,” she blurted.

Neferet was completely naked. The kind of completely naked where the way she was lounging on the blue couch against the wall, Lynette couldn’t not see the sharp thorned roses that started on her sternum, then wrapped along her ribcage. And, of course, obviously also her chest, which she didn’t want to stare at, but, wow. She tried not to look there, but that was worse, because her eyes found the tattoo, slung low across her hips that read, in a curling font, _Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate._ Between her hipbones, as though they held it like a banner. She was not going to look past the tattoo, she promised herself. She looked back at Neferet’s face, trying to figure out what was going on.

Neferet didn’t cover herself or behave as though there was anything amiss. She just lowered the volume on her music, and looked over to Lynette, “Halestorm,” she explained, pointing at the screen, as though that explained anything, “I could turn it down if it’s interrupting anything.”

Lynette looked at her blankly. Those were words she’d said. She did know she was naked, right? She seemed aware of her surroundings. She probably wasn’t on a break from reality. Maybe she was just a nudist? “Uh, no worries. I’m just gonna call it a night, and go read something I picked up at work, or something.”

Neferet shrugged, “alright. There’s soup on the stove if you want any. I left it out for you,” she said. Lynette helped herself to some, while Neferet turned the volume up again. The singer introduced a song—Lynette wasn’t really listening until Neferet was singing along, her voice low—not like she was trying to hide that she was singing, but in this sort of tantalizing way like the singer did.

_You don’t know that I know you watch me every night, and I just can’t resist the urge to stand here in the light. Your greedy eyes upon me, and then I come undone. I could close the curtain but this is too much fun…_

Exhibitionism was definitely her theory. It was her own fault, however, that she stood in the kitchen and listened to her sing, sipping her soup. That song was going to be burned into her brain, along with the image of her roommate.


	2. Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> wing night really does just lead to the damnedest things.

The next time she saw her was again, after a shift. It was evening and she’d just gotten home. Neferet was in her room when she got there, but it was Lynette’s Wednesday to cook, so she’d started making the wings she’d left marinating. By the time she was done cooking, she texted Neferet to come out, and what she’d made, and Neferet appeared. Her hair was piled atop her head, wrapped in a white towel—which confirmed that her hair was naturally _that_ red.

She walked into the kitchen, naked but for the towel, and Lynette did her best not to stare. All of her tattoos were in places her eyes didn’t belong. It was so hard to look her in the eyes. Did she seriously just not feel uncomfortable, just naked like that? Despite how much she tried not to look, the roses curled around her chest, just as sharp-thorned, the letters suspended between her hips trying to draw her eyes, almost demanding to be read: _Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate_. An invitation to the eyes that she reminded herself was _not_ addressed to her.

Lynette tore her eyes away, trying not to look back, though the image was pretty burned into her eyes—her beautiful roommate, and all the art that adorned her. Neferet didn’t seem to care, which just made it confusing. Even when she’d been in relationships, Lynette hadn’t been comfortable casually naked. It was too on display. There was no reason to be seen—though perhaps for Neferet the reason was that she, and the tattoos were art.

“Were you reading it?” She asked, motioning to the letters suspended between her hips. Lynette tried to apologize or lie and say she wasn’t—she wasn’t sure which or just become one with the floor. Neferet continued, just as casually. “That one was a _bitch_ to get. The lower parts of the letters, and anything close to the bone was an exercise in pain tolerance.”

Lynette stammered a little before admitting, “Yeah, I… I didn’t mean to stare, I just—I guess I was trying to read it,” she was blushing horribly, feeling like it was probably some kind of crime to have had her eyes that close to other places. “It looks like it would have been a lot of time,” she tried to get off the topic of her _looking_ , “Is that…latin?”

Neferet shook her head. “You’re close. It’s Italian…a quote from something I read in first year—a warning label, if you will?” She suggested, with a little smile that said there was some sort of inside joke to that.

Lynette figured it was okay to ask, though she didn’t look again, because looking there still felt wrong, even if Neferet didn’t care. Neferet didn’t know she was very, very attracted to her—that had to make it different. _Fuck_. “A warning?” She asked, “what for?”

Neferet laughed, “I’d have to either be really drunk, know you fairly well, or be fucking you to tell you why, but it means Abandon All Hope, Ye who Enter here,” she translated, with a smirk at her lips. 

Lynette, who’d expected anything but that, burst out laughing, trying unsuccessfully to cover her mouth, or stop it—it wasn’t that she was laughing _at_ Neferet, but she just didn’t know what else to make of it.

“It’s the words above the gates of Hell in the divine comedy, hence the Italian,” she explained, joining Lynette in the laughter. At least Lynette knew she wasn’t offended at other people finding it funny.

Once they’d recovered, Lynette four it far easier to keep her eyes on her face, seeing it reddened, and still wearing a hint of a smile. It wasn’t fair that she was always so beautiful, even when she’d been laughing almost to tears at her own tattoo. “A warning to any lovers you take?” She asked.

Neferet shrugged, “well, if they’re already here,” she motioned ot the tattoo, “they both know they’re going to suffer at my hands, and they want to.” Her tone was just as casual as it would be imparting a fact from class. She tossed on the oven mitts in time to pull out the wings and set them atop the stove. She then plucked a few from the tray with tongs, and left a speechless Lynette in the kitchen. _Alright. So she had kinks._ That was something Lynette didn’t expect to be hearing much about, if they weren’t in bed together, but by god, it was a thought—her beautiful roommate, practically carved from marble and adorned in ink, the kind of dangerous and irresistible that came with a warning label.

Lynette was _fucked_.

Neferet didn’t yet tell her its other meaning—that it was a request as well, that certain hopes be quelled.

**

The semester began not with a bang, but a whimper. It was all very boring, picking up textbooks, and rearranging class schedules. Lynette didn’t need to learn her way around campus, but watched the new kids bumble about searching for whole buildings that appeared to have eluded them. She remembered that phase. Neferet was more dressed than she’d ever seen her, usually very professionally—blazers and blouses, and skirts—unsurprising, because one of her degrees was finance, but she must have looked like an outlier in her philosophy classes. It wasn’t a combination that made any sense to Lynette, though her own sociology-psych minor combo for social work admissions was pretty standard, maybe she just didn’t know what philosophy-finance got a person, other than classes with two wholly disparate groups of people. Neferet was even in one of her psych classes—she was trying to fit a minor in with all that, conveniently a late-night lecture.

Classes were almost jarringly normal, profs starting slow with what they were going to be teaching and what to call them—even if a theory prof in a course on deviance began their first lecture with an anecdote about victorian perverts. Neferet’s English elective was interesting—Literature and Society. She came home all fired up and passionate, talking all about that was strange about moralizing in Chaucer, or how Shakespeare portrays ambition and kingship. They were friends—they talked in the car, and on roommate night, other nights when Lynette reduced her hours. It was nice. Lynette hadn’t really bothered to know people beyond being study partners.

It was one day after class that they were at home, watching reruns neither cared about for noise, and eating Chinese takeout out of the containers while laying on the rug—Neferet’s turn to cook usually went this way. She kept getting texts, and when finally the fifth one came up, she checked her phone, and then shook her head, “I might be hooking up with someone from my English elective,” she told Lynette, “I’m seeing if I can deal with how cloying he is.”

Lynette quipped, “think he can he abandon hope?”

Neferet’s expression darkened, but before Lynette could apologize she was laughing again, “I’m finding out. The other meaning of the tattoo is that he needs to know it’s purely physical. I have no interest in dating him. Any _hopes_ for that aren’t going to last.” There was no emotion to that, she said it the same way she’d request no onions on the supreme pizza at the shop down the street. No feelings on her hookup. Lynette bit her lip. That pretty much meant she didn’t have a chance. She didn’t think she could do something like that casually, especially without ever having feelings for her—it wasn’t fair to try.

“So, he’s not someone you’d date, just…” she tried.

Neferet shook her head, spearing a pice of chicken and eating it, “I don’t date,” she explained, “I don’t want to, so I like to make sure whoever I’m fucking knows what it is I want from them.” She speared another piece of chicken, dragging it through the sauce, “it’s just sex.” Again, she was completely unbothered by it, and at least she was clear about it, and not like one of those guys who lied to girls to hook up and then vanished.

Lynette fell silent all the same—she obviously had no right to be upset her roommate didn’t date. She had no right to Neferet. It was just disappointing that her crush was going to have to stay inside her head. She wasn’t going to try to change Neferet, or try to do something she couldn’t just because she was attracted. Neferet noticed the silence, and changed the subject, “you interested in anyone right now?”

Lynette blushed, “Yeah,” she admitted, “but also not…probably I shouldn’t be looking for relationships. The last one I was in ended the kind of way where you move halfway across the country without a return address.”

Neferet clinked her glass against Lynette’s, and offered her a wry smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Cheers for moving forward,” was all she said.

Somehow, Lynette was the one feeling naked.


End file.
